The Purple Room
by MaiTai1327
Summary: Hannibal kidnaps Will from the Baltimore State Hospital in order to further his mental and health-related experiments and bring his plan to perfection. Will sees a chance to turn the tables. They both try to play some manipulative tricks, and get to each other... Up until the point where everything goes out of control. Happens after season 1. Hannibal/Will, slash
1. Chapter 1

**WARNINGS:** gore, violence, medical abuse, mentions of child abuse, cannibalism, and a bunch of other things I won't specify here since they would be too spoiler-ish – but if you can't stand twisted dark romances, this story is not your cup of tea you can bet on it.

**Thanks so much to The-blackfirewolf for the wonderful betawork.**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Waking up**

Will believes he is having a nightmare again.

It's dark everywhere around him except the circles of blindingly sharp plates of light hanging over his zone of perception. There are moments when the unworldly contrast seems real, and then there are the ones when it is as elusive as a hallucination. He tries to look through the mixture of clear white light and blackness, and sometimes he can see the dim figure of a man walking up and down beside him. Then it's just the emptiness again.

A shadow falls on his face, and he stares into Hannibal Lecter's deadly cold, maroon eyes...

Darkness and lights. They are dancing in front of Will's closed eyelids.

He hears his own loud, uneasy breathing.

He opens his eyes, and finds himself looking straight into Doctor Lecter's eyes again. He can't move, he can't speak, he can't do anything, he is just getting lost in the hypnotic, deep abyss...

The next picture he sees is different. His head has turned wearily to one side, and he takes in the sight of his own bare shoulder. The shoulder Jack's bullet hit at the Hobbs house. The more-or-less healed wound is open now like a big, red pool of paint, and a thin, silvery blade is moving within the lines of the unfolded portions of skin. The blade creates a deeper incision, and a part of a bone becomes visible...

Will wishes he could wake up from this dream, but he can't for a long minute, and he has to watch as his shoulder joint is becoming gapped by the scalpel.

* * *

Will slowly opens his eyes. After the lingering aftermath of his nightmare, he needs a few seconds to distinguish between dream and reality when he catches sight of the room surrounding him. The walls seem to fluctuate because of the way his head is spinning, but as he makes some efforts to focus, he can clearly see purple velvet tapestry covering the dark wainscoting of the walls. Heavy brocade curtains are fixed with golden plies to the line of a big, blurred window.

An intense rush of thirstiness takes over Will's thoughts. He lets out a few dry, forceless coughs. Rips appear on his parched lips after every struggling attempt to clear his windpipe. With painful efforts, he manages to take a deep breath and fill his lungs with the warm, thick, pine-smelling air of the strange room. He coughs again.

He realizes that he is lying on a bed, and one of his wrists is chained to it. His limbs are so surprisingly insensitive that it is not even sure that he could move them if he tried. He feels too dizzy and broken to attempt any bigger movements though, so he stays stationary, lying on his back, his wrist hanging limp against the metal ring of the chain.

_What is this room_? He has never seen a place like this at the hospital. It must be at a secluded ward, some experiment he is involuntarily participating in. Doctor Chilton let some implications slip about a – supposedly illegal – special therapy he might have wanted to try on Will. _Is this it_?

Will licks off the blood-drops from his wound-covered lips, and coughs thirstily again. The saltiness of the warm blood on his dry, swollen tongue almost burns. He winces, and closes his eyes again. The darkness is more comforting than the reddish tapestry of the room.

The drugs they used on him must be the reason for this unbearable thirst. Will is perfectly sure that he has been drugged. His head is still spinning, and the unnatural weakness cannot be caused by his occasionally returning fevers. This is more than just the remnants of the illness. But what the hell are they doing to him? What use does this have? Is this some contorted physical test?

The door opens with a creaking sound, and Will struggles hard to turn his head in the direction of the noise, though it's not easy with his head being so heavy and his muscles so weak.

A doctor is standing in the doorway, wearing an operating gown and surgical mask. He is carrying a tray of medicines and syringes, which silently jingle, as he steps in.

When the surgeon walks closer, Will feels an abrupt, sharp wave of alarm coming to existence in his heart, and the blood freezes in his veins. Panic starts to crawl through his lifeless limbs...

He knows too well who this man is.

"Doctor Lecter," he rasps the name between two dry coughs.

Hannibal turns, his intent, dark eyes dart at the man lying in front of him.

"Hello, Will. I didn't expect you to wake up this soon," he says matter-of-factly from behind the shades of the white mask covering his mouth.

_Is Chilton cooperating with Doctor Lecter on experimenting with my mental state?_ Will wonders. _Is it possible? Can they do this without anyone noticing? Or is no one out there who would try to stop this? What are they trying to do to me?_

"What... did you... do... to me?" Will forms his most urgent question with difficulty, and he feels extremely tired when he gets to the end of the sentence. He takes a few rugged breaths.

"I'm not sure what exactly your question is purporting," Hannibal answers, while he places the tray of syringes on the night stand that's located at the left of Will's bed. "However, considering your limited ability to speak and explain, I'll try to answer it; one of the things I did was giving you strong narcotics in order to make you sleep for a few hours."

The doctor walks up to the window, and opens one panel of it to a small degree.

"I presume you wouldn't mind some fresh air," he continues talking to Will with the same detached moderation.

For a moment, Will catches sight of a tree standing outside in front of the window. The branches of a pine tree...

Will slowly starts to realize that something entirely else is going on... He is not just forcibly taking part in a special experiment at the Baltimore State Hospital, but something even more alerting... He has left the hospital somehow.

Hannibal takes a pair of rubber gloves from the tray, and pulls them on.

Will suddenly remembers his nightmare, and a rush of cold shudders runs through his veins. He feels goose bumps appearing on his skin when a foreboding thought is being built up in his head. He quickly has a look at his numb shoulder, and ascertains that he has bandages all around it.

"Did you... operate on me?" he asks, voice so faint that his question is hardly distinguishable from the weak, hoarse coughs he emits.

"Yes." The doctor's reply is still as casual as if Will has just inquired about the weather. "I removed a bone fragment from the tissue. I saw it on the X-ray analysis made at the hospital in your shot arm that a shattered piece of bone has been left there after they removed the bullet. I took it out."

Will recalls one of his doctors talking about the too high risk of removing that bone fragment, and mentioning the hazard of Will losing his ability to ever move his arm again if they even touched that part. This was the reason they left that fractured piece in...

Will utters a slurred moan; it's not really a word or anything sensible, just a repelled, desperate sound, and then he closes his eyes. He decides that falling back to unconsciousness would be much better than facing his situation. He might wake up to find himself back in the hospital without this thick, numb fog clouding his brain and those damned bandages around his shoulder...

He feels a sudden sting at the middle of his right arm, and partially opening his eyes he catches sight of Hannibal leaning over him with a slight, professional frown of concentration on his forehead, injecting a clear liquid under Will's skin.

_Oh, no_... Will lets his head fall to one side, and keeps watching with petrified stupefaction as the doctor fills a second, bigger syringe with the content of a green vial, and also prepares it for him.

"No, don't..." This is the only thing Will is able to press out of his lungs without losing focus on his words. The weariness pulls his eyelids close, and shaky, unstable darkness falls on him.

He senses that Doctor Lecter injects the green liquid into his veins, but he is too weak to tell him again to stop. Everything seems blurred and distant...

Before he blacks out, the last thought that comes to life in his head is that he has no idea what's happening to him, but one thing is for sure: knowing the truth would only make him feel worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Wound**

The mild, balmy fragrance of the sauce with cloves and cinnamon fills the kitchen as Hannibal removes the lid from the pan and adds a hint of more sugar to the mixture. He is preparing cranberry sauce with dried cherries and cloves for the chicken he is planning to serve Will as dinner. This time he uses real chicken and there are no human remains in the dish he is cooking. Taking into consideration of Graham's weak and dazed state, he wants to give Will a lighter food that has less heavy taste than human meat.

He fries the stripes of chicken in the heated oil until they turn golden brown, and then dips the bits into the cranberry sauce. Finally, he places a few well-shaped, shiny pieces of cherry with a sprig of fresh thyme on the top of the dish for decoration.

He decides that he should check on Will before bringing him his dinner upstairs. The effect of the anesthetics must have faded away by now, and if Graham regained consciousness, he must be going through horrible pain. Therefore, the doctor intends to give Will a few doses of painkillers before serving the food he prepared.

He leaves the recently garnished meal on the table, and choosing a bottle of painkillers instead, takes the stairs.

However, when entering Will's room, Hannibal instantly forgets about the original reason for his arrival. He catches sight of a completely disorderly bed, where the piles of sheets and blankets are covered with huge blood stains.

With grievous efforts, Will managed to turn on his side to be able to reach his operated shoulder with his chained, uninjured hand and used the time while the doctor was working in the kitchen to tear up the sleeve of his t-shirt, pull away his bandages, and rip the sutures apart. The wound is completely torn open now; the pieces of skin are hanging in creased waves marked with short, black lines by the remains of the stitches. And Will's healthy arm is covered with bright red blood.

Hannibal stops for a second in the doorway, watching the mess in silence. The room reminds him of a badly sanitized slaughterhouse as it smells of unhealthy blood. The illness is still there, it lingers in Will's veins, and it pollutes his arteries, his bones... The doctor can clearly sense its unwholesome sweetness mixed with the metallic, sour odor of blood.

"What were you trying to achieve with this?" Hannibal asks finally.

"I was searching the wound through to check whether you had placed any foreign objects into it or not," Will answers, voice coarse and colorless. He must have intense pain, at least that's what his tone implies, though he apparently tries not to show it. "Like a small device or something."

"I hadn't."

"I know now." Will gives a tired, wry half-smile. He wipes some of the blood off of his fingers with the blanket.

"Why was it so important for you to know?"

"I had enough of you trying to put me into situations where I can't control the circumstances. The last thing I need is a microchip or some other fucked up stuff like that operated into my flesh."

The doctor shoots a strict, cold glimpse at Will, but doesn't express his resentment, he only says, "You can't stay in a state like this. Your hospital clothes are all soiled with blood and tissue, and I need to change your bed sheets. I'll disinfect and stitch up your wound now, and then you should take a shower."

"Okay." Will draws in a feeble sigh.

Hannibal leaves the room in order to fetch his medical kit and new clothes for Will. When he returns, he sees with a hint of satisfaction that the younger man stayed in the same position he was when the doctor left him a minute before, and hasn't done anything reckless again.

After hanging his grey suit jacket on the back of a chair, and rolling up the sleeves of his silk shirt, Doctor Lecter pulls rubber gloves on and starts to prepare a vial of anesthetics, but Will's staccato voice stops him, "No, don't inject me."

"It's for decreasing your pain."

Will sharply coughs. Agony runs through his features, and he needs a second before he can give his reply, "I don't want you to inject me with anything ever again."

"It's a dose of clinical local anesthetics."

"I don't need that."

"Will..."

"Take it away, or I won't let you do anything to the wound."

Hannibal sees that it's no use trying to convince Will about the irrationality of this behavior, so he sets the vial back on the tray of medicines standing on the night stand, and starts to search for the bottle of antiseptic required to clean the wound.

Will turns on his back, and with clenched jaw, he lets the doctor wipe the messy injury clean on his shoulder. Hannibal calmly, precisely does the steps of disinfecting the wound, and prepares it for stitching up.

"You are not watching my face," Will says once, when he gets a moment of break from the floods of pain because the doctor stops briefly to search for a small pair of sterile pliers.

Hannibal finds the remark strange. "Am I supposed to do so?" he asks while he starts to remove the remnants of the old stitches with the help of the pliers.

"I imagine you would take your time to enjoy the facial expression of people who are suffering. Isn't it what attracts you the most about torturing your victims?"

The doctor pulls out two pieces of the surgical suture in silence, and only answers afterwards, "You are not a victim. You are my friend."

"I don't see that much difference."

Hannibal doesn't reply this time, he concentrates on his work with the wound, and Will stops talking as well, supposedly because the pain takes away too much of his energy to continue speaking.

When the doctor finishes the fixing of the new sutures, he unlocks Will's chained wrist. "It's time that you take a shower. Can you sit up, or should I help you?"

"I'll do it on my own." The younger man clumsily tries to sit up on the bed, though he has to try four times before he manages to finish the motion. The pain and the lingering effect of the narcotics must take away more of his strength than he shows.

Hannibal offers his hand, but Will doesn't take it.

"Do you think you can get up on your own?" the doctor asks.

"I'll try." Will braces his healthy arm against the wall, and staggers to his feet. Hannibal has to admit to himself that Will's tenacity still has the potential to hold him spellbound. But, unfortunately, there's no time to just stand there and admire how the younger man struggles to stay afoot because Will's limbs dangerously tremble, and Hannibal doesn't feel like stitching up Will's shoulder for a third time after a violent fall.

"Let me help you," the doctor says peremptorily, stepping to Will's wobbling body and slipping an arm around the small of the younger man's back. He can feel cold sweat stains oozing through the thin texture of Will's hospital t-shirt as he pulls him in his own direction, against his own torso. Will grabs Hannibal's forearm with his uninjured hand, groping for support, but the helplessly weak grip is not enough to hold him and he almost slips. Hannibal makes a quick motion to keep him safe. Their bodies collide a bit more forcefully than the doctor intended, and an involuntarily convulsion tenses Will's body from the unbearable pain.

Doctor Lecter holds him secure in his arms, and watches for a few seconds how the younger man's limbs are shaking from the inward suffering.

"We can go," Will utters in a hiss through gritted teeth.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

Hannibal changes the position of his arms on Will's back, and supports him as Graham starts to walk unsteadily towards the bathroom the doctor shows him at the left side of the bedroom.

As they reach the line of the marble-paved bathroom's door, Will hoarsely breaks the silence, "You stay here outside, and I'll take a shower alone."

"Let me remind you how unbalanced your movements are," the doctor passes a distant remark.

"I don't care. I don't want to have you in there with me."

"As you wish."

Hannibal doesn't completely understand why, but he feels slightly relieved. There is something inestimable about imagining they would get suddenly so close to each other that he could sense all the warmth of Will's naked flesh, take in the scent of his whole body, feel each tormented twitch of his jaundiced skin... Hannibal is certain that he would do that with professional care and accuracy, he even visualizes how he should hold the younger man without putting pressure on Will's seriously injured shoulder while helping his clothes off and showering the blood stains off of his body. But it's an intimate and unpredicted closeness neither one of them needs.

"I'll call for you if... if I need anything," Will mumbles.

"Alright. I'll be waiting here outside, in case you change your mind."

Will's features start twisting into an agonized tension as he turns away from the doctor and takes a few steps alone, keeping himself straight by holding the door-post with his healthy hand.

Hannibal waits until Will pushes the door closed behind him with an uncertain move of his elbow, and then the doctor starts changing the bed linen.

Hannibal hears three times the blunt thumps as Will collapses and falls to his knees on the cold marble tiles of the bathroom floor. Each time, the doctor's fingers become pressed harder against the piles of blood-soaking sheets he removes from the bed, but he does not stop. He keeps his promise and waits for Will to call for his help, though it never happens. Will somehow always manages to get back on his feet and continue his tasks alone.

Once the doctor also hears the sharp clink as Graham struggles to break off the rose of the shower and then the jingles of attempts to twist the arms of the bath towel keeper. Hannibal guesses that Will is intending to use these objects as some kind of improvised weapon, but the doctor just pulls the corner of his mouth into an indulgent half-smile. He has no reason to worry about such surprises since he checked all pieces before he furnished these rooms. There's no way Will can disassemble any part of the bathroom equipment, particularly not in the weak, disoriented and injured state he is currently in.

When Will finally stumbles out of the bathroom, his face is astonishingly livid as if he wasn't a living creature, but a decaying corpse and the way he moves is so unbalanced that he has to lean against the door with his intact arm to be able to stand. The shoulder part of the fresh white t-shirt he got from the doctor has already been becoming stained with rust-colored fluid around his wound.

Hannibal walks up to him, and puts his arms around Will's back, causing Will to involuntary flinch because of his closeness. The doctor pretends that he didn't see it because he doesn't feel like giving any second thoughts to this reaction.

He helps the younger man return to the freshly cleaned bed and lays him down on it.

While placing his limbs on the bed with difficulty, Will remarks, referring to the room, "Why this damned redness? It's close to tawdry, and being tawdry is not something I'd expect from you, Doctor."

"Have you ever heard about the physiological effect of colors?"

Will doesn't reply, just drags the blanket on his tormented body, and turns away from Hannibal as far as his operated shoulder allows him.

"Would you like me to introduce you in detail the experimental results of this branch of psychology?" the doctor asks patiently.

"No." The younger man takes a handkerchief from the night stand, and puts it to his lips because he starts coughing.

Hannibal walks into the bathroom, and collects Will's clothes. He lifts up the disordered pile, which is dripping dark, brownish blood and sweat.

When he returns to the bedroom, he replies with calm equanimity, "Red enhances pain."

A disgusted twitch of eyebrows shows Will's repulsion.

"Do you want me to feel more pain? That's a very nice sign of your friendship, indeed." The younger man lets out a dry cough, and turns away again to wipe off his desiccated, slightly bleeding mouth with the handkerchief.

Hannibal waits for him to finish, and then takes away the stained piece of cloth from Will's cramped fingers while he murmurs his response, "The point is not that you feel more pain. I want you to _see_ it."

"I don't understand..."

"I think you do." The doctor adds the handkerchief to the laundry he keeps in his arms and also lifts up the soiled bed sheets and blankets from the floor.

"Why exactly did you operate on me?"

Hearing this next question, Hannibal pauses for a moment before he returns to his task of piling up the spent clothes. "As I said before, I removed a bone fragment," he gives an evasive answer.

"But why? That piece of bone caused no harm to me."

"I've never said that it was for your welfare."

"Why then?"

The doctor just looks blankly back at Will. "We can talk about it at another time. You need to rest now to regain some of your strength before dinner. We'll have our first session tomorrow, and I'd like you to be in a state that allows you to focus on our work."

"Our first - _what_?!" Will turns to Hannibal with a painful wince, and stares at him both with surprise and distrust. "And what kind of _work_?"

"You'll soon see." Hannibal leaves the room with steady steps.

Planning to place the clothes in the washing machine, he brings the laundry downstairs, but stops before finishing the process. He starts watching his own silk shirt which became smudged by blood. He has no intention of changing it, but runs his fingertips over the wet fabric, letting his palm get botched by the smeared surface. Then he chooses Will's t-shirt from the heap of clothes, and holds it in the way of the diffuse sunlight creeping through the gaps of the half-drawn curtains.

The t-shirt is saturated with Will's bodily fluids, especially with intensely smelling blood stains. The doctor can't suppress the sudden desire that comes to life in his mind, so he leans to the texture and takes in the heavy, tart scent.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: A Glass of Water**

Will doesn't eat his dinner. It looks really decorative, Hannibal garnished it with some green herbs and a bunch of cherries, but even the thought of swallowing a bite of food makes Will feel nauseated.

His head is still spinning, his inwards seem to quiver from pain and weariness, and the only thing he craves for is drinking more cold water to cool his dry throat. Moreover, the red sauce covering the steaming stripes of chicken is sickening with its raw meat-color, spread out on the plate like an open wound. It reminds Will of the nightmarish pictures he saw about his own shoulder being operated.

He checks the burden of the silver tray instead of eating the food. Doctor Lecter hasn't chained Will's wrist to the bed after the shower, only locked the bedroom door, and this circumstance leaves room for some escape plans. Therefore, Will tries to consider his chances.

The tray has blunt edges, not sharp enough to cut someone, and the same goes for the spoon and the fork. Will attaches some hopes to the fork first, but when he takes it in his uninjured hand, he sees that its tines are not pointy enough. In this lacerated, groggy state he needs a really good weapon to subdue Doctor Lecter because he won't have a second chance to attempt it again if he fails to succeed in a blink of an eye.

He settles for the plate. A broken part of a plate must be sharp enough to slash the doctor's arteries when he comes to the bed to check on Will. And while Hannibal tries to stop the bleeding, Will is going to have enough time to leave the room and try to get out of the building.

Will grabs the fork, scrapes the food from the plate onto the silver tray, and then takes the empty plate in his hand. After mustering as much strength as he is capable of, he flings the plate at the floor.

Just a blunt clap, no jingling, and when Will turns with an agonized groan to see what he achieved, he sees the plate resting on the floor in one piece. _Oh, no._ It's made of break-resistant material. Or maybe he is just too weak to damage it.

Will closes his eyes, and lets his head fall back onto the pillow. He starts to see his own stupidity. He is unable to break a damned plate... How could he manage to seriously injure an able-bodied serial killer and then leave this place on his own? Even when he just wants to go to the bathroom, he must steady himself against the wall because he can't walk without support... How could he fight Doctor Lecter and escape from a building he doesn't know a thing about? It would have been a pointless endeavor and only good for getting himself killed.

_I need to have patience_, he chides himself in his thoughts. _I need to think first before attempting anything. I need to find a sensible way_...

Though he feels too weary even to stay conscious, he struggles to keep his focus and tries to think. There are a lot of things he doesn't understand, and he has a feeling that he should find some answers if he wants to see his situation clearly.

First, how could Doctor Lecter get him out of the restricted ward of the Baltimore State Hospital? Was it a conspiracy with Chilton or with some other corrupt employees of the hospital? Or is it possible that Hannibal could have done this alone?

Maybe the exact method is not so important, but knowing the answer might be able to help see if Hannibal committed an overtly illegal act, or he has some accomplices who will try to cover this all up for him.

Will tries to remember what had happened before he woke up in this room, but he can't recall anything suspicious. He went through the same routines he used to each day he spent at the Baltimore State Hospital. After eating his lunch, he felt tired and tried to sleep a bit in his cell in the early afternoon. And that's when the way too real nightmare came about his operation... It's quite feasible that there had already been some drugs in the pale, tasteless soup he had consumed for lunch, and that's why he felt so sleepy afterwards, but it still doesn't explain how Doctor Lecter could get to him and transport him from Baltimore. This would only explain why Will didn't wake up while they carried him out of the place.

And why operating his shoulder? If the doctor had wanted to limit his abilities to move and attempt escapes, he could have just cut Will's hamstrings or biceps muscles through or whatever other sick methods a surgeon could implement with no difficulty in order to cripple his captive. Hannibal wouldn't have needed to execute a complicated and detailed operation like precisely removing a small bone fragment. There must be another reason.

But it wasn't for improving Will's health conditions either. Even Hannibal admitted that it wasn't the case.

Is it just because of the pain the wound causes? This idea also sounds improbable, since the doctor wanted to give Will anesthetics to reduce his pain. And there are so many ways to make a victim suffer; Hannibal wouldn't choose a specific and not so overall effective one like this. What else then?

Is it some perverted, karmic punishment for Will because he tried to shoot Lecter at the Hobbs house? It seems a bit too childish for an intelligent man like Hannibal, but still, Will regards it as the most believable explanation, at least for the moment. He sees that he needs to ask the doctor again if he wants to figure out the right answer.

And the most important question: what are the exact plans of Doctor Lecter now that he has Will at his mercy? He is likely to attempt some kind of manipulations to contort Will's state of mind, or perhaps some physical tortures... Or is he just trying to resurrect some messed up friendship? Will can't decide which one of the three options sounds the most appalling, but one thing is for sure: he is not willing to participate in any of them. He must find a way to get out of this place as soon as possible.

But where is this room?

He could only see branches of a pine tree from the bed when the doctor opened the window, and now it's pitch-dark outside, there's no point in trying to inspect the outer world from inside. Is it somewhere out in the wilderness? It would make sense, taking into consideration of the fact that if they were in the middle of a city, Will could easily escape from this place or call for help any time he felt like, and supposedly, it wouldn't be a part of the doctor's plans. But even if they are out in a deserted area, Doctor Lecter must have a car by which he managed to transport Will here.

Will instantly starts to ponder how he should find out about the car and where Hannibal keeps its keys, but then he realizes that there's no way he could properly drive when he is this dizzy and unable to move one of his arms. _Okay, so the car is no solution; at least not right now. I must leave this place on foot_, Will concludes. _However, if I want to run, I need to regain some of my strength, and I need a more in detail knowledge of the environment._

Will decides that he needs to sleep, and tomorrow, his first task will be to stagger to the window and look out. He has to see where this house or building or whatever is.

As he defines his job for the morning, he feels a bit calmer, knowing that he has at least one step of an escape plan ready. He is slowly able to reconcile his swirling thoughts and premonitions, and falls into a sleep-like, burning immobility which waves with pain and disquiet.

* * *

He is dragged back to reality when the boards of the floor are silently creaking next to him, and opening his eyes, he sees Hannibal standing there. The doctor is already wearing a dark, velvet bathrobe and black pajamas, which makes it easy for Will to infer that Doctor Lecter is also going to stay at this place for the night.

Will feels a repulsed twitch of his muscles as fear arises in his heart by the doctor's presence. He wishes he could control this. The short, involuntarily convulsion is painful for his operated shoulder, and he doesn't like the hard coldness that appears for a split second on the doctor's features every time he sees this sign of abomination, but it's an unwitting bodily reaction Will can't hide.

Doctor Lecter turns and collects the plate from the floor. Will follows the motion with his eyes, trying to figure out what's on the other man's mind. Hannibal doesn't speak; he just sets the plate back on the tray.

"It was an accident," Will mutters the lie. "It... it fell..."

"It's alright." That's everything the doctor says while he arranges the tableware on the tray, and lifts it up in his arms.

Even though Hannibal's expression shows neither any signs of pique over the ruined composition of dinner he served nor mistrustful anger, Will inwardly senses that the doctor didn't believe him.

* * *

This is undoubtedly one of the worst nights of Will's life. He can't sleep, but he can't really stay awake because of the aftermath of the narcotics, so he mostly just lies there paralyzed by medicines and waves of pain, staring into the empty darkness.

Hannibal left him alone after carrying the tray with the ruins of the perfectly prepared food out of the room, locking the bedroom door with a loud clank from the outside, and not returning. This made Will feel a bit more comfortable first, but whenever he could fall asleep from the fatigue for longer than a minute in spite of the pain gnawing its way through his shoulder, he instantly wakes up with a start, believing that the doctor is standing next to him again.

Though the rational part of his mind suspects that Hannibal went to sleep and won't return until next morning, the almost paranoid dismay created by his vulnerability and his fears about Hannibal's possible plans to drive him insane or torment him with some other methods make him stay awake, leaving him unable to rest.

He also worries that if he starts dreaming, he won't be able to distinguish between nightmares and true happenings, and he might completely lose track of reality.

So it's darkness, pain and hazy dread that follow him through the night, and when the morning lights start to crawl in beside the heavy curtains, he is less relaxed and rested than before he started his attempts to sleep after the never-eaten dinner.

But however exhausted Will feels, he tries to muster enough self-possession to get up, and after a few fruitless attempts, he can finally pull himself into a sitting position by holding the night stand firmly with his intact hand.

Trying to soothe the mordant pain in his shoulder and clear his permanently reeling head a little bit, Will takes a few deep breaths, and then forces himself up on his feet. He has to lean against the wall and rest for a minute, but afterwards, he feels strong enough to continue, so he lurches to the window. Pushing the brocade curtains aside, he has a look at the landscape.

The weak sunlight glitters on the icicles hanging from the window frame. As Will looks out of the window, he can only see white snow and hills and pine trees... From this point of view, it definitely looks like they are in the middle of a huge, endless, northern forest.

Will closes his eyes for a moment, and tries not to give in to despair.

He is on the upper floor of a log cabin. He could climb down, plus jump from the lower windowsill. It's not so difficult at all, he might even be able to do that with one arm crippled, though the distance threatens with tripping and falling, but it could be much worse. But where should he start running? He is never going to make it alive through the wind, ice, and hundreds of acres of forest... And what troubles him even more is the snow covering the ground everywhere. He won't be able to avoid leaving footprints, and the doctor might easily chase him down if Will runs into the forest.

He has to find a map of this area...

"The question is not how you can leave this place, but where you could go."

Doctor Lecter's paced, familiar voice from behind his back gives Will a fright. He was so deep lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear the doctor unlock the door, and now suddenly, Hannibal is standing right behind his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the white, limitless forest like Will does.

"Do you suppose that it matters to me?" Will's voice is raspy and thick after the long night spent locked amongst his nightmarish fears. "I would go _anywhere_ where I could leave you behind."

"Are you sure that a place like that exists?"

"Do you really think that you have power over everything?"

The doctor just keeps looking at the snow, and so does Will. Silence lingers in the room after the two questions which get no answer from the two men standing by the window.

After a long while, Hannibal remarks quietly, "I brought breakfast for you."

This brief, practical statement shatters the numb spider web of shadowy thoughts fogging Will's brain. He turns to the doctor, grasps Doctor Lecter's left elbow with a clumsy move of his healthy arm, and lets the older man escort him back to his bed. Will sits down onto the side of the bed so wearily that it's more like collapsing.

Finding himself still not much hungry, though he knows that he should be, Will just keeps his eyes gloomily on the silver tray, on which Hannibal carried his rich, delicious-looking breakfast in.

"Do you want me to cut it up for you?" Doctor Lecter inquires, making a slight gesture towards the fried eggs on the side of a plate.

"No."

Quietness falls onto the room again. Then Will takes a slice of toast in his clammy hand, and watches it lifelessly.

"Would you prefer some fruitcake?" Hannibal asks when he sees that the younger man won't start to eat.

Will doesn't give any reply to the question, he only asks, "What about your schedule?"

"My schedule?" the doctor echoes, slightly raising his pale eyebrows.

"I mean, we are in the middle of nowhere... How do you want to keep up with your work from here? Are you on a vacation or what? And... and the FBI... Do you want to make them believe that I escaped from the hospital and kidnapped you? Is that how you want to play this?" Will lets the slice of bread drop onto the blanket from his shaking fingers, and pushes his palm against his throbbing forehead, rubbing his hand against his disheveled, matted curls. "Is that what you want?"

Hannibal lightly tilts his head to one side, and watches Will with an inscrutable look on his calm, aristocratic face. "I'm not sure you are on the right track to understand what's happening to us."

"_Happening to us_?" Will almost starts laughing, but then it's just a few forceless coughs that leave his lips. "So this is not about you torturing me, but it's something that's happening to us? Like a change of weather? Like a car accident?"

"It's not what I meant."

"I don't care what's happening to _you_."

"It's just the two of us here. Whatever happens to me is going to affect you too, and there's no point in denying that." The doctor takes the slice of toast from the bed, and neatly places it back on the plate. "If you are not hungry, I'll take this away."

"Wait." Will shoots his healthy hand out before Hannibal could lift the tray, and grabs the toast again. "I'll eat that. And get me some fresh water. I'm thirsty."

Hannibal responds with a frown, "You don't need to be this rude just to show me how angry you are with me."

"I'm not angry with you. I'm disgusted with you."

The doctor's facial muscles freeze, and Will realizes that he started to talk with dangerous bluntness. After all, he is alone in the middle of an endless pine forest with a sadistic serial killer. Images of gutted corpses and burnt remains fill Will's head in a split second...

Obviously, he should choose his words more wisely. He realizes that there's no use trying to act like he was in control of the situation when he is absolutely not. First, he needs to see the doctor's plan, and then he can start to create his own one... And being arrogant and superfluously hostile won't help him accomplish his goals.

"Er, okay, I'm sorry I guess," Will mumbles. "Can you... bring me a glass of water, please?"

Hannibal leaves the room, and soon returns with a spotless crystal glass full of cold water. Will considers for a short moment the time it would take to break the glass on the floor, grab one of the shatters and try to cut the doctor's throat open with it. He estimates that Hannibal's reaction would be quicker, so soon forgets about it, and just drinks the cool water with loud, eager gulps. When he is done, he wants to put the glass on the corner of his night stand to keep it for later, but the doctor instantly sets it on the tray.

Will throws the toast back next to the glass with a disappointed sigh.

"You said you wanted to eat that," Hannibal reminds him, but Will just lays himself down, pulls the blanket over his legs, and turns away.

The doctor sits down next to him on the side of the bed.

Closing his eyes, Will tries to block out Doctor Lecter's nearness and regain some of his strength he lost during his short but tiring trip to the window. After a while, he manages to forget about Hannibal's presence, and only realizes about five minutes later that Doctor Lecter hasn't left, he is sitting next to him motionless.

"What are you still doing here?" Will murmurs the question sleepily.

"I'm waiting for the drug to take effect."

Will's eyes flash open.

"I put it in your drink," the doctor adds as an explanation. "Since you seemed rather upset about me injecting you, I thought it would be a more convenient method for both of us."

_Oh, no, no_... Will lets his eyelids fall close again, and begs silently in his thoughts for Doctor Lecter's words just to disappear from his head, for the whole situation to fade away... He hates this too much, this room, the pain, the fatigue, the inability to do anything from his own will... "Please... why are you doing this do me?" he whispers huskily.

"Because you are my only friend, and I want to help you."

For some unknown reason, this gentle, simple answer scares Will more than anything else could.

The room slowly starts swaying, and Will has to see that the doctor told the truth about putting some tasteless hallucinogen in the glass of water. Will opens his eyes wide, he tries to focus, to stop the walls from moving, to keep this dizziness from increasing, but he can't. The contours of the objects start to blur and lean into amorphous shapes...

"What... do you... want... from me?" Will utters indistinctly. His tongue and lips are strangely benumbed, and each syllable he speaks turns weaker and less certain.

Hannibal puts his hand to Will's stubbly chin, and turns his head in his own direction, forcing Will to look him in the eye. The piercing darkness of those eyes seems to be the only thing in the room that doesn't lose form but turns sharper and clearer. Will wishes he could concentrate on anything else, but he is unable to. Doctor Lecter's eyes are filling his zone of perception, and guide him into an indistinctive whirlpool of swirling shadows and hazy colors.

When the doctor finally gives his reply, it's professionally reserved and patient. The mellow voice echoes through the swinging, shapeless images mingled in Will's mind. "I want you to tell me, step by step, how you killed Marissa Schurr."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The First Step**

Hannibal watches as the flickers of concentration and rational thoughts gradually escape from Will's eyes and they become replaced by blank darkness. The morning lights swirling in the room seem to break before they could mix with that blackness, unable to affect it, unable to resolve the growing shadows. "I didn't do that," Will mumbles mechanically. "I didn't kill Marissa."

"Let's start at the beginning. Tell me why you chose her," Hannibal speaks to him sedately as if he was talking to any of his patients in the course of an ordinary session. "Why her and not anybody else?"

"I didn't kill her... I didn't..." Will repeats in muddled, less and less distinguishable words.

Hannibal keeps his fingers around the younger man's jaw forcefully, not letting him turn away, not for a moment.

"You saw something she did... What was that?" The doctor's voice is unshakable as he leans closer to Will. "Try to remember."

"I didn't..."

"Yes, you did. She said something; something that ultimately made you choose her. Can you recall what that was?"

"No. Let go of me."

"Try to remember."

Will's pupils are so wide that it's almost impossible to make out the lines of his blue irises. The doctor looks down into the endless abyss of those bloodshot, tormented eyes, and moves closer again. "Try to remember," he repeats, leaning completely over the other man's body now.

"No, please... please don't do this to me..." Will's voice turns even weaker and his chest starts contracting and expanding with an unhealthy pace.

"What did she say?"

"I don't know... I don't know... please."

"What was that?"

"How could I know?" The words leave Will's lips in a sudden, sharp, brief sound. "I might not even have been there. It was you, not me!"

"Just try to remember. You heard it, and it made you choose her."

"No, no..."

"Think back. Why her?"

"I don't know... You have only seen her for a few minutes... I have no idea why you chose her."

Hannibal feels a wave of discontent running through his veins. His fingers around the younger man's chin tighten. He tries to overcome the displeasure though, and forces calmness on his features, telling himself in his thoughts to stay composed. This hint of derailment doesn't mean that they are not on the right track. "You are looking at the question from the wrong direction. We are not talking about me," he answers Will patiently. "Talk about _your_ memories."

"But... but I didn't..." Will starts shuddering from the inner chaos the hallucinogens has been creating in his head. The doctor lets go of Graham's jaw and puts his arms around the shivering man's torso, pulling Will into his embrace.

"Start with the small details. Can you remember the autumn leaves on the ground? The smell of the forest?" he asks while entwining as much of Will's body as he can with his arms.

Instead of an answer, Will just gasps for air.

"I know you can," Doctor Lecter murmurs gently, sliding his fingers into the viscous, tangled curls of Will's hair. "What else did you feel?"

"Nothing. Please..."

"You were standing there, watching the golden blanket of leaves around the trees... What else can you recall?"

"It was... it was windy."

Hannibal climbs over Will's shaking, sweating body, and presses his limbs against the convulsing muscles as if he was trying to squeeze all of Graham's flesh into a formless meat paste. "Very good," he breathes heavily into Will's ear. "You are doing it perfectly. Go on."

"Cold... the wind was cold... And... and she... and her mother arrived... and... and Abigail... it was... it was cold..." The syllables of Will's fragmentary sentences converge into an indistinctive mess of huffing and puffing.

Hannibal digs his fingers deeper into the younger man's hair. "Go on," he demands.

"She... she was... having an argument... with her mother... and... and..."

"You chose her. Why her?"

Will's head falls back; he is drooling, panting erratically.

The doctor pulls him even closer. "Do you remember at least one of the reasons now?" he asks softly.

Will is in a trance, eyes lost in the emptiness, dark like night. Finally, the words burst out of him in a hardly recognizable, frantic jumble, "She confronted Boyle. It... it was practical to create false leads."

"Very good. What else?"

"She... disrespected... her mother."

Hannibal can't suppress a contented sigh. He deeply hoped that Graham was smart enough, and that wonderful, peculiar empathy of his was strong enough to make it sensible to start their work with this difficult step, though he couldn't be completely sure up until this point. The doctor finds himself so pleased by the success that the overwhelming warmth of the feeling almost surprises him. He couldn't recount any occasion when he has felt this proud and gratified before.

He is only able to focus again on the actual situation, when Will emits a coarse, rattling sound.

For a last second, Hannibal enjoys the almost impossible closeness, the heat of Will's fever-burning flesh, each struggled lifting and sinking of Will's ribcage moving forcibly together with his, and then he stops holding Will so violently.

He loosens his arms and has a look at Will's body. There are dark stains around the sutures at Will's bandaged shoulder, and the younger man wheezes so loudly like choking. Hannibal wipes off the lines of saliva running down Will's jaw with his palm. After spending a second taking in the sensation of the warm, slimy fluid on his fingers, he sits up and cleans his hand with a handkerchief from the night stand.

Making an automatic gesture with his arm, he evens his suit and removes the disheveled mops of hair from his forehead.

Of course, Will didn't know that when Hannibal mentioned the state he expects Will to be in to be able to focus on their work, the doctor meant being drugged with hallucinogens. The more shocking the surprise was, the more effective the session has become. Doctor Lecter gives a light smile to the trembling, heaving body in front of him. _Perfect_. He puts his fingers to Will's eyelids, and closes the younger man's eyes.

"You can have some rest now," he murmurs. "I'll let you picture in your head what we were talking about, and sleep a few hours until lunch."

The doctor gets up from the bed with a paced, graceful movement in order to head for the door, knowing that it's time to end this task for the day. He doesn't have to push things too hard. What he has achieved is wholly enough for a start. He has all the time of the universe to make everything work.

* * *

Hannibal takes almost three hours to prepare Will's lunch. He suspects that all his efforts will be in vain, and Graham won't eat from the food, or will only take a few bites, but even the process of composing the beautiful meal just for Will gives him a feeling of pleasant satisfaction. After placing the carefully chosen tableware and the completed lunch on the silver tray, he walks upstairs to see Will's current state.

He believes that he would find Will lying in delirium, trembling from the aftermath of the hallucinogens, but when he unlocks the door and enters, he spots Will standing at the side of the bathroom. The younger man's hair is wet, indicating that he has just taken a shower, and also washed some of the smeared blood stains off of his t-shirt. His skin is yellowish pale from pain and illness, his eyes red and inflamed, but otherwise he looks astonishingly sober as he staggers back to his bed.

The doctor sets the tray on the night stand and helps Will lie back down.

For a moment, the thought flashes through Hannibal's mind that next time he should not forget about increasing the doses of drugs he gives Will because it seems that the other man's body and mind is more resistant than it could be reasonably expected on the basis of his fragile, weakened state.

Will doesn't speak, just turns away from the doctor as usual, and covers his body with the blanket.

"I'll go out for the whole afternoon," Hannibal announces. The eager, hopeful glimmer that promptly appears in Will's eyes is unmistakable. "I'll travel to the nearest city to buy us food, ingredients and a spare battery for the heating system," the doctor explains. "Can you take care of yourself alone in the meantime?"

"Yes," Will replies quickly, turning involuntarily in the direction of the window. The doctor catches the meaning of the wistful glance.

"If I were you, I wouldn't jump from there," he tells Will smoothly. "The distance is not so dangerous, but I still suggest you that you shouldn't do it."

"Was that a threat?"

"Not in the least. That was a piece of friendly advice."

Will just makes a mistrustful grimace. "I don't have much of an opinion about the way you try to show me your _friendship_."

"You just don't understand it. With time, you will."

"Sure." A cynical, mirthless smile accompanies Graham's brief answer.

The doctor chooses not to give any reaction to it. "Do you want me to bring anything special to you from the city?" he asks instead.

"No, I don't."

"You refuse to tell me what could make you feel better. Why is that?"

"Because I couldn't care less about what you buy or bring here. It'd make no difference. Or do you think that a slice of fruitcake would make it up for my time spent at an asylum, for my crippled arm, my nightmares, my pain, my captivity here, or for anything you ever did to me?"

The doctor adjusts the blanket around the younger man's shoulders. "Will, you are being melodramatic."

"Am I?"

"You could just simply tell me what you'd like to have for tomorrow's lunch, for example. I was planning a light pumpkin soup and stem ginger biscuits, but if you'd prefer something different..."

"I don't give a damn about the food you serve," Will spits the words with conspicuous loathing.

The doctor runs his fingertips along the other man's moist, pale forehead. Will tries to pull away from the unwanted touch, but he must be too weak to move far enough. Hannibal puts his palm to the skin and checks the younger man's temperature. Will shuts his eyes tight while the doctor's hand lingers on his face, and only opens them again when Doctor Lecter finally removes his hand.

"You have a fever," Hannibal comments imperturbably. "Do you want me to give you antipyretics?"

"No."

The doctor puts his hand back to Will's forehead again in spite of the repulsed shudder running through the younger man's body. _Alright, his fever is not so intense_, he ascertains. Therefore, he decides that he accepts Will's negative response.

"Which city are you planning to visit?" Will asks suddenly.

Hannibal gives him a small smile. "You don't need to worry about that."

"Why are you avoiding answering my question?"

"Because this information is not necessary for your recovery."

Will snorts with disdain, "So, now suddenly, you care about it? You weren't this concerned about my recovery when you concealed my illness for long weeks, or cut my shoulder open, or drugged me!"

"What is your definition of recovery?"

"What is yours?"

The doctor just lets the smile linger in the corners of his mouth without giving any response. He adjusts on Will's blanket for one last time, and then turns to leave the room.

"This is not going to end well," Will's voice is unwontedly dry, "You should know that."

Doctor Lecter pauses briefly, then he continues his way out. "You underestimate my resolution." That's all he replies.

"Or you underestimate mine."

Hannibal doesn't show any opinion of this, just exits the room. But when he is standing outside in the pine-smelling corridor, an unexpected twinge of uneasiness shoots through his mind. He makes sure to turn the key twice in the lock of Will's bedroom.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: The Window**

Will spends one and half hours trying to impair the lock on the bedroom door with the handle of the spoon Hannibal left him on the silver tray to eat his lunch with. He gives another hour to the window, trying to break it or at least a part of it, hoping to get fragments that could be used as a weapon against the doctor. All his efforts turn out to be pointless, since he can neither cause any considerable harm to the locking system nor to the massive window, which is undoubtedly designed to be break-resistant.

He doesn't feel like stopping his attempts though. Since the moment the humming noise from the engine of the doctor's car had become audible and he heard Hannibal leave, Will has felt much stronger and livelier than before. An intense desire to escape has started to burn in his heart and fuelled his endurance.

Hannibal left the window half open. It seems an easy way of trying to escape, but there is something about it that makes Will feel uncertain. The doctor would have locked the window, or even would have previously built in a framework of bars from the outside, if he had had any reason to worry about Will trying to leave the room through it. This idea makes it suspicious for Will why the window could be left open, so he tries to find another way before venturing to jump or climb down the wall.

However, when all his other attempts end with no positive result, he starts to consider the climb again. _Perhaps, Hannibal has regarded me as too weak to get down from here_, Will guesses. _Or he has been too sure that I wouldn't jump into the cold snow barefoot, in a blood-stained t-shirt and a pair of boxers. No matter what the reason might be, I have to try this._

However, before attempting to leave the room through the window, Will tries to estimate again where this cabin might be located.

He had gone to sleep at about 1 PM in his cell at the Baltimore State Hospital, and he must have woke up after the operation around 7. It couldn't have been much later, since he could see some sunshine, so the sun must have still been up, at least partially. It means that Hannibal could have only driven maximum two hundred miles with him while Will was unconscious, even if exceeding every possible speed limit.

They might be in Pennsylvania. The forest would fit to the idea, and Hannibal couldn't transport him further plus accomplish an operation. The doctor must have needed at least an hour to get Will out of the building of the Baltimore State Hospital, and maybe two hours for the operation. He had utmost 3-4 hours to drive. Yes, a forest in Pennsylvania seems a reasonable location for this log cabin.

This recognition doesn't make Will feel more comfortable though. It very much likely means that they are far from every built-in area, and even the nearby roads might be deserted and rarely used. He has to think precisely what he might need to reach a populated place.

He sits down on the side of his bed, and starts to concoct a plan. He has to climb down, break into the cabin through a lower window, and steal from the other parts of the building whatever he might need for his trip through the forest. He doesn't want to follow the roads first. While he hasn't left the cabin far enough behind, he can't take the roads where Hannibal could hunt him down by using his car.

He tries to create a list in his head. _I need warm clothes, good shoes, a coat, a flash-light, food and drink. Hopefully, I will also find a map and some money. And, of course, a sharp knife or some other weapon would be useful, in case Doctor Lecter would be able to track me down. Without these tools, there is no point in running into the forest._

_And I might still be a wanted criminal at the FBI. I will need to wander a really long while before risking to catch anyone's attention. In the state I am currently in, it would be a stupid idea to pretend to be a hiker. Any helpful stranger I might come across would spot my crippled arm and the traces of the drug use, and I cannot let it happen that somehow I would end up in a hospital. The doctors would find out about my abuse, see the marks left by chains, and would surely call the police. So the best is to go by foot alone, without asking for help, as far as I am just able to._

As he reaches this conclusion, he realizes that he needs to hurry if he chooses to walk a long distance. He needs a head start if he wants to survive this.

Disregarding the heaviness in his skull and the pain of his operated shoulder, Will scrambles to his feet, and supporting himself by the wall, walks unsteadily to the window.

As he pushes the panes open, he can instantly sense the cold wind rushing inside the room. He feels a sudden deep desire just to crawl back to the bed and pull all the blankets over him. But he overcomes the urge, and puts one of his knees over the windowsill. For a moment, he believes that he is going to fall out, because he feels that dizzy as the distance opens in front of his eyes, but then grabs the frame with his only usable hand, and manages to hold himself.

After taking a deep breath, trying to clear his head, he nevertheless climbs over the windowsill, and attempts to sink gradually, in order that he can reach the lower window with his legs and brace his feet against it, but he is too weak to keep his weight securely with one hand.

He slips, and the next moment, falls into the snow against the frozen ground of the yard, onto his knees. Patches of snow jump into the air from the collision, and then float back onto the ground like clouds of white dust.

Suddenly, an overwhelming, unexpectedly strong wave of pain shoots through Will's body. It's so violent that he can hardly believe it; it feels as if the bones exploded in the flesh of his legs and tore through it. For a moment, he literally can't accept that a pain like this could exist, and he is perfectly dumbfounded. The fall was not so serious. He should only feel a light burn at his shanks because of some superficial abrasions...

As the second of the perplexed numbness disappears, he looks down at his knees to see what could have happened, and his heart skips a beat. Light red streams are running across the crystal clear whiteness in every direction around him, and he realizes with petrified horror that it's his own blood gushing from his legs, which are covered by cold snow.

He moans from pain and astonishment, then tries to get on his feet, steadying the weight of his tormented body to the wall, holding the sill of the lower window with his intact hand. As soon as he drags himself up into a standing position, the same pain hits him, but this time at the bare soles of his feet. Then he hears a blood-curdling jingle as the icy chunks of snow are falling to the ground from his moving limbs.

_What is this sound?_ He starts to suspect the truth, but it's still too hard to believe it. There is a last moment he spends doubting that this can be real, and not just a nightmare haunting him in his sleep. Hannibal is a psychopath and a sadist, but he wouldn't have done this to him...

Then he leans to his legs, which look because of the running blood as if he were wearing red boots. He observes the gashes and smaller wounds shooting blood streams on his skin. They seem to have appeared from nowhere. As he looks closer, he can see the ice-like, clear spikes digging into his flesh... _Glass shards_.

He hears the soft jingling again as he tries to move one of his legs. Under the thin layer of fresh snow, there are piles of shattered glass panes, hidden underneath the white cover.

And something breaks inside Will. The dark rage that comes to life in his heart submerges every previous wish to escape.

No, he is not going to leave this place. He won't run like a scared prey. Not after this...

Hannibal could have installed a damned grid over the window! But he had to give his captive some false hopes, he had to create this cruel way to torture Will even more... This is just too much... Too much...

The burning anger disappears fast, and the only thing that remains in Will's heart is cold emptiness.

Suddenly, everything seems eerily clear for him. He can't even understand how he could have planned to escape like a coward. Doctor Lecter was right: there is nowhere to run. There is no place he could find peace. No. He has to fight, and try to defeat the doctor in his own game. He won't take an easy way out. He won't take a way out at all. He will fall into this madness, and never again return to the rational cautiousness and the desperation of survival instincts... He is going to win, or die trying.

Will feels the winter and the pain take over his body when his limbs start uncontrollably shaking. He understands that he needs to get inside the house as soon as possible. At first, he considers walking around the building in spite of the dozens of glass shards stuck in his feet, but then he decides against it. He can't be sure how big is the surface covered with glass splinters, and he doesn't want to stumble across numerous piles of sharp shatters before he can find the door. Therefore, he turns to the window, and starts hitting the lock of it with the elbow of his healthy arm.

* * *

When Hannibal arrives and enters the kitchen with packages of food in his hands, Will is sitting at the kitchen table, not far from the partly opened window with broken lock. He keeps a trussing needle in his movable hand, and works on digging the glass shards out of his legs with it. The floor is almost completely red from blood everywhere around the place, and the kitchen furniture became smeared with moist, red hand-prints when Will had been searching through the drawers for a useful tool to scrape the glass out of his wounds.

Hannibal stops in the doorway for a moment, probably for sizing up the situation, and then sets the packages he brought on the more-or-less clean kitchen counter.

Will doesn't say anything, and neither does the doctor. Hannibal takes off his coat, wraps it around Will's arms, which have an unnatural, bluish color from the cold, and then brings his medical kit out. Without uttering a word, he kneels down in front of the younger man, and starts to help him remove the glass shards from the wounds with the help of the small surgical pliers he previously used to pull out the spoiled sutures of Will's operated shoulder. Will stops his attempts, and lets his hand rest on the side of the table while Doctor Lecter picks up his work.

Will has a lifeless look at the trussing needle, imagining stabbing the doctor's neck through with it, but then he just lets it fall onto the wooden slab. No easy way out...

"This was an important lesson for you," Hannibal moderately starts to talk. "I sincerely hope you see now that you can trust me on my friendship. As a caring friend, I told you not to jump, and you should've believed me that I only meant to protect you with my advice."

Will doesn't give any answer. The doctor pulls out a longer glass shard from the younger man's calf above his ankle, then sweeps off some tiny splinters from his skin.

"I don't mean any harm to happen to you, Will," he continues speaking, "You should understand this. But there are things you cannot see without some practical examples. If you had trusted my good intention towards you, none of this would have occurred."

Will still keeps silent, mechanically letting the older man turn his legs in the desired direction to make his job easier.

After cleaning the wounds from glass remains, Doctor Lecter opens the bigger cuts, which Will previously pinned together with a bunch of paper-clips found attached to a bundle of recipes. The doctor disinfects the gashes and stitches them up. Afterwards, he rechecks the other, smaller wounds to make sure that there are no glass fragments left in; he even washes them with an oily liquid to rinse every tiny splinter out, and then also disinfects them.

Will mutely watches him work. His legs look as if he had pressed them through a cutting-machine. The skin is striped with bright red everywhere below his knees. And Hannibal's gloved hands running through the swollen, fragmented, red surface seem like two strayed, white-flagged ships floating around on the waving sea of blood.

"Do you have nothing to say?" Hannibal asks after long minutes of silence while starting to bandage one of Will's feet.

"Not particularly."

The doctor looks up at him briefly, then turns back and keeps on working with an undisturbed pace and precision.

"I suppose it means that you chose not to share your opinion with me," Hannibal remarks after he finishes one leg and turns to the other.

"You are right about your supposition."

The doctor finds another gash that needs to be stitched up because it continues bleeding, so he starts to fix it. He returns to the conversation only after he managed to complete it.

"Are you displeased with me, Will?" he asks with an earnest expression.

The younger man just presses his lips forcefully together from the pain and gives no reply. When Hannibal sees that he won't get an answer, he asks another question, "Did I disappoint you?"

Silence again. But after a minute, finally, a dark, bitter smile appears on Will's haggard face. "You definitely did not."

The doctor turns to his medical kit, and doesn't speak again while he finishes his task and takes care of all of Will's wounds.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: The Lunch**

Hannibal escorts Will upstairs, back to his room.

The doctor feels mild disappointment. This is the first time Will has an opportunity to see some of the other parts of the house, but Graham doesn't look around. His eyes are filled with numb suffering, and he doesn't focus on his surroundings. Hannibal considers for a while to draw Will's attention to the other rooms, but then he changes his mind. Every step Will takes with his wound-covered feet must be a new torture, and it's very improbable that Will would care at all about the way this place looks while going through this unspeakable agony.

Hannibal offers him to carry him upstairs, but Will's only answer is a repulsed cringe and a short, "No". Even though the doctor knows that he is capable of holding Will's weight, since he managed to bring the unconscious man from his car to the upper floor when he transported Will here from the hospital, and sees Will struggle with each step, he doesn't force his suggestion. There is something inconceivably beautiful about Will being this tormented, this broken, and yet so strong... Doctor Lecter admires it in spite of the lurking danger it implies. This is more than anything he could have ever hoped for. _This is pure perfection_.

When Will finally makes it through the infernal trip upstairs and collapses on his bed, the doctor covers him with the blankets.

"Do you need anything?" he asks while adjusting the corners around Will's shoulders.

"A glass of water."

Hannibal turns and leaves the room without further talk.

A displeased twitch appears at the corner of his mouth when he enters the kitchen to fetch a glass for Graham. Now that Will is safe in his bed, Doctor Lecter's attention has been directed to the state the place is in.

It looks horrible. Will must have staggered around in the kitchen while searching for improvised tools to temporarily treat his wounds, and everything is stained with blood. Literally all of the furniture, not to even mention the floor... Furthermore, the window has a broken lock, and there are small piles of snow gathering underneath, carried by the cold wind.

The doctor sees that he is going to have a long evening if he wants to clean up this mess, at least as much of it as possible.

* * *

Hannibal had dissolved some pills of narcotic effect in a glass of water he had given Will in the evening, and as a result of this, Will slept through the whole night and the next day's morning despite his evident pain. It gave Doctor Lecter enough time to rearrange the kitchen, and prepare a rich lunch for Will.

Now he finishes his work with pouring some Bavarian cream sauce over the roast meat, and then brings the complete meal upstairs.

After unlocking the door, he enters Will's room, which always seems a shade darker than the other parts of the house because of the purple velvet tapestry covering its walls.

Will has already waken up, and he is staring at the ceiling without a stir, lying on his back.

Hannibal places the silver tray on the younger man's night stand and wants to assist Will getting up, but Will precedes it by shakily sitting up without the doctor's help. Doctor Lecter doesn't particularly like these indirect signs of how much Will despises to make closer physical contact with him.

"Did you sleep well?" Hannibal inquires politely.

"No." The curls of Will's tangled hair clotted from sweat cast shadows over his reddened, bleary eyes. "I had nightmares. I always do."

The doctor perceives something painfully disillusioned in the tone the younger man uses, and it leaves a hollow, aching vacancy in the doctor's heart as a reflection. Hannibal decides to switch the topic.

"I brought you pumpkin soup with stem ginger biscuits, and Bavarian roast pork with potato," he explains to Will matter-of-factly. "Which one do you prefer to try first?"

"I only want some water."

Hannibal takes a glass of water from the tray, and gives it to Graham. Will takes the glass from his hand obediently, and drinks all of its content.

"I didn't put any drugs into it," the doctor remarks.

The way Will looks at him is empty. "How nice of you."

The answer is nothing special, just the usual half-hearted sarcasm, but something still makes Hannibal wary. The lifeless darkness in Will's eyes... It doesn't fit the order of the psychological mechanisms he planned. Is this a sign of early failure of his creation, or just an indication of the fatigued anger on Will's part because of his wounds? If the first option is true, he should kill Graham right now, before letting things slip into an unexpected situation.

The doctor frowns. He despises the idea to a level that he chooses not to process it. It's obviously too soon to give up on his plans just because of a sudden obscure suspicion. He is able to handle this, for sure. Will has been hurt because of the glass shards, and that's all, but sooner or later, Graham is going to get over this resentment. No reason to overreact to it.

"We'll have our next session only in the evening," Doctor Lecter explains, while cutting up the slice of roast meat, and dipping the first spoonful of it into the sauce. He hands the spoon over to Will, who reluctantly starts eating with a slow, uncertain pace.

After two bites, Will puts the spoon back on the tray and turns away.

"Is it not to your liking?" Hannibal asks softly. "If you'd like to eat anything else..."

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten for two or three days." The doctor puts another piece of meat on the spoon and holds it in Will's direction. "Here, take this, please."

"I feel sick." Will turns a few more inches away from the food the doctor offers. "Maybe, if you didn't stuff me with drugs and didn't cut my body into pieces, I could eat."

"You'll get better after a while, but you need to eat something, if you want to heal." The doctor gives him a stern look.

"I'm not sure that I want to heal at all."

"I know you do. And now eat, please. You'll need some energy for our next tasks."

To Hannibal's surprise and re-arising suspicion, this last argument convinces Will, and the younger man takes the spoon again, in order to continue consuming his lunch. It is clearly visible though, that Will struggles to swallow the food, and his face grows paler with each bite. After a few agonized gulps, he stops eating the meat and the sauce, and turns to the pumpkin soup, but he doesn't manage to finish more than four spoonful of it.

"I'm done." Will drops the spoon on the side of the plate, coughing. "You can take the rest away."

The doctor sits down next to him, and puts an arm around his waist, disregarding Graham's badly hidden abhorrence because of the sudden closeness, and supporting him so that Will can more easily keep his exhausted body in a sitting position. "Go on, you have to eat," Hannibal talks to him quietly.

"I can't. I'm... I'm tired. I want to have some rest now."

_It must be the effect of the great dose of narcotics I gave him, and the constant mordant pain he is going through_, Hannibal infers.

The doctor takes the spoon, and places another portion of roast meat on it. And before he could give any second thoughts to what he is doing, he shifts it in the direction of Will's mouth. With a worn-out look in his eyes, Will accepts the food the doctor gives him, and eats it in silence. Doctor Lecter spends a moment doubting that he should go on, but then he dips the spoon into the sauce again, and feeds Will another bite of meat.

He manages to give a couple more before Will shakes his head, and pulls away.

"It's enough," Will mutters, casting his eyes on the bed sheets, not looking at Doctor Lecter.

Hannibal gets up from the bed, feeling slightly disturbed by the fact that he has just fed Will, and Graham even let him do so. Though he has not much to ponder over, since Will seems so weak and disoriented, that it is not even sure that he really perceives what's happening to him. He just mumbles something about the food being too much for him, then falls on the bed like a corpse. Only the slight trembling of his muscles and the raspy breaths he takes show that he is still alive, otherwise his unhealthily pale face and sunken cheeks would perfectly resemble a dead body.

The doctor collects the burden of the tray, and wants to leave, but the younger man's faint, nearly inaudible voice stops him.

"Have you ever done this before?" Will asks. "I mean feeding someone like you did to me..."

"Yes. A really long while ago."

"Was it a small child?"

A cautious inner voice tells Hannibal to cut the conversation right there, and he follows it without hesitation. The memory that occurred to him made the room suddenly turn cold, and the convenient choice is to drive it away.

"I'll let you sleep some more," he tells Will instead of an answer. "We'll have time to talk about past experiences when you regained your strength."

"How long are you intending to keep me in this room?" Will asks with a horrified shudder. The phrasing "regained your strength" must have indicated a creepily long time for him.

"As long as it is necessary."

"Necessary for what?"

"For your recovery."

Will closes his eyes with a tired sigh. "You left your job behind, didn't you? You left everything behind. You won't go back, and neither will I..." he murmurs sleepily.

"You are beginning to understand." That's the last thing the doctor says before exiting the room.

He decides that he should spend his afternoon making some preparations for Will's next task, so after cleaning the dishes, he goes to the study he furnished beside the kitchen, and sits down at the desk under the window. He takes a pile of newspapers he previously set on the side of a shelf, and starts to crop some of the articles with a pair of silver scissors.

* * *

Will is lying on his bed, staring into the empty nothing like he has done almost the whole time while he has been awake.

He didn't need much talent to act like he couldn't find the vitality on his own to eat his lunch. It was absolutely not difficult to pretend because it wasn't really pretending. The pain that has also been gnawing its way through his legs now, not just his operated shoulder, the returning fever, the nauseating aftermath of narcotics, the permanent spinning in his head... They made it more than easy for him to play up the resigned enervation.

Of course, he would have never let his fragile weakness be shown this clearly if he hadn't worked on creating his own game. A game that is a perfect match for the one the doctor started. At least as cruel and ruthless as Hannibal's.

Will is not sure how much the doctor knows about his intentions. Does Hannibal suspect that Will chose to fight? Probably, the doctor could sense it, but Will supposes that he has no reason to worry at this point. Hannibal would never admit at such an early stage that he might make mistakes and should be way more careful.

Actually, Doctor Lecter has never really been careful when it has come to Will. Keeping the control over the situation, but always risking a bit more than he reasonably should have... And now, Hannibal won't back out of this. He is too certain about his abilities to handle any kind of difficulty Will might try to create. And that's a solid sign of the fact, that the doctor truly underestimates his captive's strength, and also underestimates the numb hatred Will harbors.

But Will feels sure that he has stronger resolution and more dangerous coldness in his soul than the ones Doctor Lecter presumes him to have. He has been to the darkest corners of the human mind, and suffered too much... Nothing scares him anymore. Hannibal cannot know, but Will is ready to sacrifice his sanity to get back to his torturer. From now on, he is willing to trade the rest of his hopes of a normal life... for revenge.

He has a rare, unique talent with his empathy skills. And who says that this can only serve a noble, heroic purpose like assisting the authorities with catching killers? Oh, no. This ability is a lot more dangerous than that. He can step inside monsters' head, he can re-create a world that exists only in other people's imagination, and he can find long-hidden fears, unspoken secrets, shattered dreams, never-shown weaknesses... This is a double-edged blade. It doesn't just cut Will's tortured mind into pieces, but is also able to do that to others. And Hannibal hasn't realized so far, how dangerous this can be. He'll see one day.

Will is going to do to him the same thing the doctor has been trying to do to Will since the first time they met.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: The Dinner**

Hannibal sets Will's dinner on the night stand. Will blinks the opaque veil of sleepiness away, and tries to focus on the tall figure of the doctor standing next to his bed.

"Let me introduce you the schedule of our evening," Hannibal starts to talk, voice professionally impassive and even. "First, you eat your dinner, then I'll remove your bandages from your shoulder. You'll take a shower. When you have washed your skin clean, I'll apply some antiseptic on your suture to disinfect it, and then I'll cover it with fresh bandages. And afterwards, I'll give you a high dose of hallucinogens so that we can have our next session before you fall asleep."

Will looks up at him with surprise. He didn't expect Hannibal to talk this directly about the prospect of drugging him.

"Er, okay," he says after a while. His words sound heavy and grating after the fragmented, nightmare-filled sleep he had in the afternoon. "I don't think I have much choice, anyway."

"No, you don't. I only told you our program as a courtesy."

Will makes a bitter grimace, and then tries to sit up on the bed. The doctor entwines his back with his arms, and pulls him up.

"It's... it's okay, I can do this," Will mumbles, but Hannibal doesn't listen. He adjusts Will's crippled arm next to the younger man's side, and keeping one hand on the small of Will's back, holding him straight while sitting, pulls a bowl of salad to the corner of the night stand.

"Can we start the dinner with some salad?"

"Y-yes..." Will wants to say something about him being able to eat his dinner alone, but Hannibal has already pinned a few leaves of arugula on the fork. Will realizes that he can't tell Doctor Lecter that the only reason he let the doctor feed him last time was that he tried to gain information about a person Hannibal had possibly cared for in the past. Therefore, now Will has to accept his situation with a reluctant, mirthless half-smile.

The doctor gives him the first bite, and then the second one, and as they reach the third, Will starts to get accustomed to the circumstances of consuming his dinner. Actually, it's very probable that he wouldn't eat a thing on his own, even though he would be capable of doing so. From this aspect, it's really a help that Hannibal sits next to him, supports him, and relentlessly shifts each next portion of food towards him, however nauseated and weak Will feels.

"Was the child you fed such a long time ago a boy or a girl?" Will asks once, after swallowing a slice of tomato.

Hannibal pauses briefly, and then he continues feeding the younger man without a word. Will knows the answer. A tiny hint of hardness freezing the doctor's eyes for a split second at a certain part of the sentence was enough to show him. It was a girl.

"Was she your daughter?" Will continues asking questions imperturbably.

"No."

"But she was your blood relative, wasn't she? A younger sister?"

"What makes you think that we should talk about her?"

Will needs a high amount of self-control to perfectly disguise a triumphant smile. The fact that Hannibal doesn't want to speak about the small girl shows clearly that Will has found a weak spot. Maybe the only existing one. And on his first attempt! _How promising_. He doesn't want to push too hard though, so he just shrugs his healthy shoulder, and doesn't break the silence again while eating his dinner.

When, at the end, Will sums up in his thoughts what he has eaten, he sees with astonishment that he has consumed almost the whole salad, plus two salmon sandwiches the doctor cut into small cubes, and also gave him without asking.

Hannibal lets him drink a glass of water, and then he says, "Take off your t-shirt, please. I'll help you remove the bandages."

Will deliberates for a few seconds how he should avoid this, but since he doesn't have any fruitful idea, he obediently makes an uncertain motion towards the neck of his t-shirt.

Hannibal must soon realize the reason for Will's hesitation, how problematic it must be for Will to pull off his t-shirt with only one movable hand, because he steps next to the younger man. "Let me help you."

"It's not necessary, I've managed it a couple of times on my own," Will answers quickly. He doesn't add that he needed more than ten minutes each time to complete the process, and it was a highly frustrating experience while he tried to make small, careful motions to free his arms from the t-shirt, fighting hard not to black out from the shots of pain hitting his wound with every brief attempt.

But even without Will mentioning any of these, Doctor Lecter doesn't accept the answer, and puts his hands on Will's back, helping him pull the t-shirt upwards. Will closes his eyes, trying to ignore the increasing pain in his shoulder and the doctor's touch on his shivering, clammy skin. He slackens his muscles in spite of the way he feels, and lets Doctor Lecter remove the moist garment.

When involuntarily clenching the fist of his healthy hand from the pain afterwards, Will suddenly notices something that makes his heart jump in his chest. The tip of the thumb and index finger on his operated side lightly twitch as well. And as he tries to move them again, they make another weak flutter, though it hurts like a stab of a knife in his shoulder.

"Look, my fingers are moving." The words burst out of Will before he could consider it.

When he realizes how irresponsible he was by revealing this information to the doctor, he presses his lips together angrily. But he didn't think this over, he was so happy to see his fingers stir, and Doctor Lecter was the only one present to share his surprised pleasure with.

Will feels a wave of bitter annoyance because of his childish stupidity, and it soon overshadows his former happiness.

Hannibal gives him a smile that has been the closest to an honest one since the day he brought Will here from Baltimore. Then he puts his hand over the bandage on Will's shoulder so gently that it is not even painful.

"Of course they are moving. Your muscles started to heal very fast," he speaks, while letting his palm linger over the covered wound. "Did you think I'd crippled your arm for the rest of your life?"

"Yes," Will admits quietly.

"You still don't understand how important you are to me."

Will turns his eyes away, to completely avoid eye-contact. "My doctors said something about the too high risk of removing that bone fragment," he mutters. "They didn't want to bear responsibility for accidentally damaging my arm in an irredeemable way."

"I'm a better surgeon than they are." That's all Doctor Lecter replies with unflinching self-content, then slips his fingers under the fabric of the bandage, and slowly removes it from Will's shoulder.

Will has a look at the wound. It's leaking, and badly swollen, but the stitches hold properly, they haven't opened after the jump and the other tiring activities he had to endure yesterday in order to get inside the doctor's kitchen from the snow-covered yard.

Hannibal suddenly leans over the wound, and smells it from so close that his nose almost touches the dark line of stitches.

"What are you doing?" Will groans. The air seem to escape his lungs as Hannibal moves further, up and down along the wound, taking in its smell deeply.

Will tries to back away from the doctor, but his exhausted body is not capable of such fine movements, and he falls on the bed. He finds himself lying on his back, with Doctor Lecter on top of him.

Hannibal stops, but stays leaned over Will, with his mouth almost on the suture. "I'm checking the wound for signs of infection," he explains in a husky murmur, but Will can clearly see that whatever the doctor is up to has not much to do with medical examination.

Will senses a repulsed sick feeling building up in the pit of his stomach, and an intense urge to kick the older man off of his body starts to overcome every rational thought in his head. But then he reminds himself how little control the doctor momentarily must have over himself. Hannibal's eyes are clouded by the dark, mysterious shade of a subconscious feeling. It's enough for Will to steel himself, and instead of pushing the doctor away, he loosens his knees, letting Doctor Lecter's body sink further down on his.

And the next moment, Will senses a wet, warm friction over his aching skin, and he realizes with a grisly sting of shock that the doctor has licked his wound.

Will shuts his eyes, and struggles to hold back the involuntary signs of disgust his body tries to give. And, instead of stopping, Hannibal goes on, he licks the whole length of the suture. And then he does it again. And again...

Will keeps his eyes closed tight, and tries to force himself to think of something completely different and much less disturbing. For a short time, he manages to visualize the dogs he used to keep, as they are playing on the front porch of his former house, but the next second, he feels the mildly unsmooth, moist surface of Doctor Lecter's tongue over the stitches again...

No matter how desperately he tries to focus on the image of the dogs running alongside the trees, the picture is fading away, and he is unable to block out reality. The scent of Hannibal's expensive cologne fills his nostrils mixed with the acrid smell of the remnants of the antiseptic his stitches were formerly treated with and the foul sweetness of the swollen wound, and it creeps inside the darkness behind Will's shut eyes. He feels the doctor's breath against his skin, the mild aches after superficial scratching of teeth, and the quickening, more and more eager laps of the older man's tongue...

And Will can't take it any longer. The only reasonable argument that occurs to him and could hopefully make the doctor stop, leaves his lips in a trembling whisper, "Shouldn't you be a bit more careful? The encephalitis... I... I'm not sure how this works... but... maybe, you might get infected if... if you..." He feels unable to finish; his muddled words melt into a few hard gulps as he tries to suppress his nausea.

And Hannibal finally comes to his senses, and abruptly keeps himself from continuing licking the wound. The doctor sits up, watching the younger man with an unreadable look in his cold eyes.

Will knows that he made a huge mistake with speaking this rationally, and he should have let the doctor go on with whatever he was doing, but it was just too much. He even doubts for a second that he is able to do this... Maybe he should kill himself, or attempt to kill Hannibal, instead of trying to bond with Doctor Lecter and get inside his head... Maybe he wasn't right when he thought that he can handle it...

But he doesn't let himself follow this train of thought. He can't allow himself to get lost in despair.

There is a side of Hannibal that still resembles the mask of the composed psychiatrist Will got to know. The elegant, always perfect doctor who has sessions with his patients, who prepares an exquisite meal for the guests of his house, who plays with words and meanings the way he wants... But now that Doctor Lecter has had Will at his mercy for long days, and feels that he is free to throw the mask away, able to do whatever he yearns for, he has started to reveal the other side. A side at which only his victims could have a glimpse at, up until now. And those are all dead or completely confused, but Will is still alive, and sees the truth crystal clear.

Will has to drag this darker side in the foreground. This is the depth of Lecter's nature that even Hannibal himself might be unable to handle after a degree because he has never sunken to the bottom of the abyss before. He has always kept a certain amount of control, whatever he was doing in the secret parts of his life – Will is sure of this. He hasn't lost it. Never had. There has always been a way back to his normal ways, a perfect balance between psychosis and clean rationality... Will has to grab the shatters of insanity, the impulses of a sick mind, the real darkness. He can't stay on the surface.

The doctor's calm, un-affectionate voice suddenly turns Will's attention back to his actual situation.

"Excuse me for being this... intrusive." Hannibal wipes the orange color fluid, the mixture of his saliva and the liquid from Will's wound, off of his mouth with the back of his hand. "I suppose it's time that I let you take a shower."

Will is unable to form a sentence; the best he manages is a vague nod. But it's enough to show the doctor that his captive understands the next task, so Hannibal gets up from the bed, and taking the silver tray and the plates with him, leaves the room.

When the echo of the doctor's steps dies in the corridor, Will turns on his healthier side at the edge of the bed, and pushes himself up into a sitting position. He gets up on his wound-covered feet with a painful wince, limps into the bathroom, and then collapses on the side of the wash basin, choking from sickness, shaking severely. He vomits the food he ate for dinner into the porcelain bowl.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: The Second Step**

Hannibal is satisfied with the outcome of checking Will's operated shoulder, even though when he decided to smell the wound, he didn't plan to taste it as well. But it was hard to resist the temptation, and he had no reason to do so. Will is his captive, so no need to hide his true desires deep in the dark. He can finally throw his 'human veil' away, and be his true self with Will.

And as he starts to feel this in his veins, he realizes that this might be the most unique sensation he has ever experienced. He is going to explore something completely new and unpredictable with Will. This is an unknown beauty of life he has an opportunity to meet.

He has always attached strong hopes to Will and his skills, and now that he is actually getting closer, it all seems even more tempting and challenging like before.

Maybe, he should be more careful, but he has never denied anything from himself he really desired. And this is more than just a longing to satisfy. This is a chance to be free.

* * *

The doctor places clean clothes on Will's bed, and then he takes a shower in his own bathroom.

When he returns to Graham's room, already with his silk pajamas and dark bathrobe on, carrying his medical kit and the bunch of cropped articles, Will has also finished the shower and wears a new pair of boxers. He looks worse than ever with his hollow, yellowish cheeks, and desiccated, thin lips, his reddening eyes fixed at an imaginary spot in the blank air of the room. The doctor expected the shower to freshen the younger man a bit, but there is absolutely no sign of that. Even the wound on his shoulder looks abraded, and tiny cracks are visible on the suture as if Will had been rubbing it for a long time with unusual force and relentlessness while cleaning his body.

Hannibal strokes the wound with his fingertips, then he pours antiseptic over the surface, and makes a fresh bandage around it.

He doesn't wear rubber gloves anymore, since he doesn't see much point in meticulously following all the rules of avoiding infection after Will tore his own sutures open with his bare hand on the first day, or fell into piles of dirty glass shatters, or after he himself licked the raw, oozing wound on the younger man's shoulder. If there was any chance to get infected, they are already way past that. No reason to keep the barriers of gloves and surgical masks between their bodies.

He helps Graham pull on a new t-shirt, and then prepares a syringe with hallucinogen. As he turns back to Will, the younger man holds his movable arm in the doctor's direction with a numb look in his bloodshot eyes.

"Why do you think I'm drugging you?" Doctor Lecter asks while injecting the transparent liquid into Will's vein.

A tense twitch runs through Will's facial muscles. "Because you're a sick psychopath."

The doctor finds himself almost amused by the answer. "That's an interesting theory. So you suppose that I have a perverted affection for injecting drugs into your circulatory system?"

"No." Will gives him a lopsided, misshapen smile. "But the fact that you are insane makes you believe that you have the right to do to other people anything you want to."

"Do you think I'm doing to you _everything_ I want to?"

Will's lower arm among Hannibal's fingers becomes stiff. "I don't know that for sure," he replies with a hint of delay. "But you do believe that you have the right to do so."

"I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. I don't see you like that."

"Oh, really?"

"You are implying that I see you only as an object."

"It's how psychopaths see their victims."

Emptying the liquid from it, the doctor removes the needle from Will's flesh. "As I told you, you are not a victim. You are my friend."

"You don't have friends, you only have _victims_. For you, everybody is just a victim."

The doctor turns away from Will to put the used needle in a plastic bag. "Is that how you see me?" he asks as he slides the tool into the corner of his medical kit.

"It's who you are, Doctor Lecter."

"You are forcing me into a box of prejudices and generalizations in your mind."

"You have forced me to see who you are. And that is who you are."

"Am I unable to convince you otherwise?"

Will's eyes get darker as his pupils dilate when the drug begins to take effect on his neurons. The distorted smile disappears from his lips. "Okay, then let me go," he replies hoarsely. "Treat my wounds, give me warm clothes, shoes, some money, and drive me to a bus station."

"Is that what real friends do, according to you? Letting each other go?"

"Friends do what's best for each other."

"And that is exactly what I'm trying to do."

Will begins to laugh quietly, and it's a tormented, joyless laugh mingled with painful coughs. "You don't care what's good for me. You only care about what's good for you, and project it on me."

The doctor feels a sharp hit of displeasure. He doesn't like the amount of hostility in Will's voice. "I can make you happy, Will," he answers firmly. "You'll see it."

"I'm not your puppet; I won't feel the way you want just because you want me to."

Hannibal puts his hand to Will's bristly jawline, and turns his face towards him. The touch makes Will uncomfortably stir. The doctor notices, however, that the younger man doesn't make any attempts to pull away in spite of this conspicuous aversion. _Curious_.

"You'll see the beauty of the happiness I'll give you. I can protect you from the bad influences of the society," Hannibal talks to him gently. "I can protect you from the false picture they force you to paint about yourself..."

Will suddenly interrupts him with a question, looking straight into the doctor's eyes, "Were you able to protect your sister?"

The air freezes around them. The howling of the cold wind outside becomes audible in the sudden silence of the room.

"Are you trying to hurt me, Will?"

The amorphous, unnatural smile appears on Will's wounded lips again. "No, of course not. You are my only friend, and I want to help you."

Hearing the cold mockery, Hannibal lets go of Graham's chin with an abrupt motion.

"It's time that we start today's session," he says instead of an answer, and adjusts Will's pillows. "Sit there," he orders the younger man dryly.

Will moves backwards on the bed, yielding, and sits with his back against the freshly arranged pillows, supporting his nape by the purple tapestry covering the wall. The doctor takes one of the newspaper articles, and places it in Will's movable hand.

"Have a look at it," he demands.

Will lifts the piece of paper, and takes an enervated look at the photo and the accompanying text.

"A mother is accused to have murdered her estranged children?" Will lifts his eyebrows. "Why do I need to read this?"

The doctor gives him another article. "You don't need to ask questions at this point," he says, regaining his smooth calmness and using it with the usual ease. "I'll explain your task when it's time for you to understand."

Will glimpses at the second article. It's about an attempted robbery supposed to have gone bad, where the house owner was found left in a pool of blood, skull broken.

The doctor continues handing similar articles over to Will, each about a murder with the mentions of a presumed perpetrator. As the hallucinogen begins to take away Will's ability to concentrate, his hand starts shivering and his motions become less and less certain. Hannibal sits down next to him, carefully putting an arm around his shoulders. By forcibly turning Will's head in the right direction, the doctor helps Will focus on the articles resting on the younger man's knees and the one held in his hand.

He brought twelve articles for Will about murders seeming simple and clear, and gives the younger man a few minutes to study all of them. When Hannibal decides that he has left enough time for Will to take into his tortured, swirling mind what he sees, he says, "Now tell me which one of these is the one you committed."

"Me?" Will moans with surprise. "I didn't..."

"One of these is your work, you just disguised it because you didn't want the police to be able to link that murder to a serial killer. Tell me which one."

"W-what... I don't understand..."

The doctor keeps Will's head firmly at the back of his neck, guiding it in the direction of the articles.

"Think," he commands peremptorily. "Visualize how you would have done it, and you'll remember."

"Did you... did you kill one of these people?"

"None of them. But you did."

Will lets out a few thick-tongued syllables the doctor cannot identify as sensible words.

"Visualize it," Doctor Lecter repeats his order.

Will's body starts shaking, so Hannibal slips his hand down to the younger man's waist, and pulls him into an embrace in order to be able to keep him in a sitting position.

"Come on, imagine it," he murmurs into Will's crisscrossed mops of hair.

Will collapses against the doctor's chest, wheezing, while Hannibal gives him a few measured strokes up and down his spine.

"The... the second one... the burglary..." Will breathes.

A discontented furrow appears on Hannibal's forehead. "I assume this was just a blind guess. Think harder. I need you to _remember_." He puts an article into Will's cramped hand. "Take a look at the pictures again."

Will tries to hold the paper, but it falls out of his hand. His muscles are contracting and loosening with an irregular pace, so he is unable to make complete motions. His limbs start pressing against the doctor's torso with an unnatural force.

For a short moment, Hannibal wonders if Will is just faking a seizure, but as he sees the uncontrolled, intensifying convulsions, the overt straining of the younger man's jaw, and the white foam appearing in the corner of Will's mouth, he has to admit that he might have chosen a bit too high dose of drugs for this evening. He doesn't feel displeased though, since he hears Will growl some nearly indistinguishable sentences about murders, and it makes him able to figure out that Graham's brain is working with the currently seen articles.

"We'll get used to this after a while," the doctor murmurs, still stroking Will's lower back. "We'll see which dose is the most suitable for you. The previous one was certainly too little, but this seems higher than necessary."

Will's only response is a rattling, unintelligible sound.

"Alright, it's alright," Hannibal whispers into Will's hair. "We'll continue from here next time."

The doctor collects the articles, and places them on the night stand. He plans to get up, and leave Will alone with the effect of the drug and the nightmares of the dark room, but something keeps him in place. This simply feels nice to half-sit half-lie there, with Will in his arms, holding him like he was protecting him from the growing shadows of the room.

He changes his mind, and doesn't loosen his grip around Will, but pulls the blanket over their legs, and turns Graham's body in a position that seems more comfortable than the former one.

Will might need medical assistance if he truly has become overdosed. It is the sensible decision to stay with him, and check his physical reactions to the too-high level of chemicals. Graham might get stronger seizures, or might make some self-destructive, uncontrolled motions, and it's not something Hannibal is eager to let happen. He entwines Will's side with his left arm, fastening the younger man's healthy arm so that it cannot make any bigger motions, and leans his head on Will's fever-hot, damp neck.

It feels surprisingly natural to lie there like this, closing his eyes, taking in the smell of raw pain, looming illness and warm beads of sweat, a unique combination of scents that's Will's own, and nothing else can match.

But what makes Hannibal feel a sort of hesitation is that deep in his heart he is not sure that the real reason for staying here is that he wants to keep an eye on Will's medical condition, or that he doesn't want to be alone in his own room.

A certain part of his past is like a raving monster locked up in a cage. He can always sense the presence of those memories, but they remain well guarded in a black corner of his mind, far from every clear, calculated thought and planning and cautious step... And with Will's words about his sister, the monster seemed to momentarily lash out from behind the grids of the cage and tore its claws into the accurately drawn map of the world the doctor had built up for himself with patience and effort...

It was just a hint of a shadow, just a blink of an eye, and he feels confident that he can keep the monster locked up forever... but it has left a dull aching behind. And he doesn't want to be alone with this mysterious pain, and let it grow in the empty darkness of the night.


End file.
